Tag: Baroque

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Festival-conference

Ambronay 2025

Ambronay Festival 2025

Over three weekends in September, this wonderful festival that takes place in an abbey not far Lyon, Annency and Geneva covers everything from trio sonatas to the B minor mass, and from “a duet for clown and viola da gamba”(!) to Mozart’s precocious “Die Schuldigkeit des Ersten Gebots”. Performers include well-known ensembles such as Vox Luminis, Ensemble Correspondances, Cappella Mediterranea and Pygmalion, but also – a trademark of this talent-fostering organisation – plenty of young artists who will undoubtedly continue to grow as a result of such exposure.

If you’re lucky enough to be in the area, check out the programme here: Dossier de presse_Festival 2025 (in French only, and accurate at the time of printing!) and support Ambronay’s initiatives if you can!

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Recording

Northern Light

CD cover Northern Light Richardot Daucé Ensemble Correspondances

Echoes from 17th-century Scandinavia
Lucile Richardot mS, Ensemble Correspondances, directed by Sébastien Daucé
81:39
harmonia mundi HMM 905368

The subtitle of this collection introduces us to a rare repertoire of sacred works (plus a short suite of dances by Sebastian Knüpfer (1633-1676), Kantor of the Thomaskirche in Leipzig from 1657). It takes its inspiration from a collection gathered by Gustav Düben, a member of a musical family that had strong connections with the Swedish court for nearly a century. The collection suggests that unlike royal courts with a strongly nationalist repertoire – that of Louis XIV is a prime example – the Stockholm court heard music by an eclectic range of European composers and musicians, including both Germans and Italians. The present CD reflects that variety by featuring music by both, including among the latter motets by Vincenzo Albrici (1631-96), one of an itinerant family of Roman musicians and a member of the court of Queen Christina of Sweden prior to her abdication in 1654 and later in Dresden, where Giuseppe Peranda (1625-1675) also worked under Schütz. The motets of both are laid out as solo verses interspersed with a refrain for a vocal ensemble.

At the time of the accession of King Charles XI in 1675, Düben led a court ensemble of 16 singers and musicians of varied nationality. Most of the music included on the present disc is reminiscent if not the equal of the smaller scale works of Schütz and features primarily works for an alto soloist with accompaniment for strings and continuo. The most ambitious piece is a birthday motet for the king ‘Jubilate et exultate’, a celebratory work adapted from an Advent motet by Franz Tunder originally in German. It seems the adaptation of works was common practice among Düben and his associates, another being ‘Ack Herre, låt dina helga änglar’, a Swedish-language adaptation of another work of Tunder’s. It is a reflection on joining Christ in death of sombre beauty, as is the lamentation on the death of Charles in 1697. It is by Johann Fischer (1646-1716 or 17), whose original music is lost but the poetry of which is here fitted to another lament by the composer.

Many of the works included are simple strophic settings, but one that is strikingly original is ‘Es war aber an der Stätte’ by Christian Geist (c1650-1711), a north German singer and organist that worked in the Danish and Swedish courts during the 1670s. Scored for solo alto, the first part is a narrative about the entombment of Christ. That is followed by a deeply felt and bitter lamentation in four strophic verses laced with a falling chromatic figure that serves to accentuate the agony. It is worth adding that the one work here that will be known to many is also the best, Johann Christoph Bach’s tear-drenched lament ‘Ach, dass ich Wasser’s g’nug hätte’.

All this music, much of it deeply devotional, is performed by Lucile Richardot and the peerless Ensemble Correspondances with a quiet authority that all but defies criticism. Richardot is not only the possessor of a richly burnished mezzo with a particularly distinctive contralto range and superbly controlled delivery but, and perhaps more importantly, she is one of the most expressive singers of Baroque repertoire currently active, as anyone that has heard her magisterial Penelope in Monteverdi’s Il ritorno d’Ulisse can testify. Add to that a technique that includes an ability to turn ornaments with clean precision and you have a set of performances to cherish. The several items that require a vocal ensemble in addition to Richardot can boast the participation of such fine singers as soprano Caroline Weynants and the outstandingly talented young tenor Antonin Rondepierre.

There are some recordings that are difficult to describe because they are so ordinary. Then there are those hard to do justice to because their apparent ordinariness and lack of sensationalism cloaks attributes more elusive but no less valuable. This is one of those. There’s no great music here, just supreme art concealing art.

Brian Robins

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Recording

Legrenzi: Balletti e Correnti, op. 16

CD cover Legrenzi Balletti e Correnti

Il Trattimento Armonico, directed by Nicola Reniero
42:27
Brilliant Classics 97496

The nine Balletto-Corrente pairs that make up this set were published posthumously by the composer’s nephew. They are scored for five-part strings, for which the present performers chose two violins, an alto viola, a tenor viola and a cello, with the director playing harpsichord continuo.

I have known the set for decades (I published the sixth pair in 1990 with what was King’s Music!) but have never heard them in actual performance. Legrenzi’s music has always struck me as a fusion of Italian and French ideas – his harmonic palette is much richer than many of his countrymen’s, and his voice-leading much more masterful. As I listened to the disc again and again (it’s short enough for that not to be an issue!), I was reminded again and again particularly of another 17th-century composer: Henry Purcell. Many of these dances could easily fit into one of the latter’s theatre works. One musical idea that caught my ear more than once was something I had only previously heard in one of the sonatas Legrenzi devoted to the Holy Roman Emperor (presumably in the hope of getting a job in Vienna!), where he juxtaposed triplets and duplets; it is a surprisingly striking device.

As for the recording itself, I have to say that the performances (for the most part) deserve better; a richer acoustic might have taken the sharpness off the violin tone, and better microphone positioning might have given the continuo part less prominence. There is a real elegance to some of the playing, but there are also brief passages where the ensemble doesn’t speak with a single voice. This is especially noticeable in the two five-part sonatas (La Marinona and La Fugazza, both of which I edited years ago) that “fill out” the disc; there is plenty of room for some of the many trio and quartet sonatas that are rarely recorded.

Brian Clark

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Recording

If the fates allow

CD cover If the fates allow Helen Charlston

Helen Charlston mS, Sounds Baroque
58:46
BIS-2734

If the title of this outstanding CD gives little away, its appendage is rather more forthcoming – ‘Music by Purcell and his contemporaries’. Even so and although there are several staples from the Purcell recital repertoire (‘O Solitude’, ‘I attempt from love’s sickness’), there are some rather more unexpected inclusions; ‘If music be the food of love’ is included in two of the three settings made by Purcell, but neither is the well-known one (Z. 379b).

Also unusual is the absence of programme notes, foregone in favour of a fascinating conversation between Helen Charlston and Emma Kirkby, in which they express their feelings about Purcell’s songs and what it means to sing them. Naturally, there is much accord, but what is interesting when it comes to performances is just how contrasted the approach is. One need only listen to a little of Emma Kirkby’s wonderful 1983 recital of the songs after this CD to recognise that the objectives of the singers are quite different. Dame Emma’s performances are all about vocal purity, clarity of diction and a near-perfect musical technique, with cleanly articulated ornaments and shaping of phrases. Charlston comes from a new generation, the best of whom – certainly including singers like her and Lucile Richardot – is starting to recognise that there is potentially more to this repertoire than simply singing it perfectly. Take Charlston’s singing of ‘Morpheus thou gentle god’ by Daniel Purcell, Henry’s younger brother. In this at-times fiery text about jealousy by Abel Boyer – the penultimate passage starts ‘I rage, I burn, my soul on fire, Tortured with wild despair and fierce desire’ – the demands on the singer are in stark contrast to the long cantabile of the earlier part, dramatically intense and full of rhetorical gesture. Charlston rises to these demands superbly, bringing the song to a terrifying peroration on the final word ‘destroy’.

This is, of course, an extreme example that takes us into a world of Italianate fervour and intensity, but this attention to the rhetorical detail of all the songs here is one of the striking details of the recital. One is given the impression that Charlston has thought deeply and carefully about every word she sings and never forgetting, or letting us forget, that in Purcell’s day this repertoire was often sung by actor-singers. Rarely, for example, in my experience has the Virgin’s fear in ‘Tell me, some pitying angel’ been so graphically expressed, each ‘Why?’, each ‘How?’ given a marginally different inflection, while the lack of a ‘vision from above’ at the ‘wondrous birth’ brings near panic in the repeated calls of ‘Gabriel, Gabriel’. The result is a compelling mini-drama. In ‘Music for a While’ Dryden’s snakes drop from Alecto’s head with languid perfection. And there are so many more examples to explore. I urge you to discover them for yourself.

Throughout the recital Charlston is supremely well supported by Sounds Baroque (Jonathan Manson, bass viol, William Carter, Baroque guitar and theorbo, and Julian Perkins, harpsichord and chamber organ); on their own account they contribute a set of Divisions by Christopher Simpson and John Blow’s Morlake Ground, the latter played by Perkins on a richly sonorous copy of a two-manual Ruckers Hemsch instrument by Ian Tucker.

At a time when I frequently have cause to compare the state of early music in the UK unfavourably with what is happening in several European countries, France in particular, this is pure manna from heaven. Here are British artists performing English music to as near perfection as one has any right to expect.

Brian Robins

Categories
Concert-Live performance

Les Talents Lyriques at Les Invalides

Les Talents Lyriques at Les Invalides

Given its history of rule by the Bourbons and Napoleon, neither averse to the limelight, it is no surprise that grandiosity plays no small role in French architectural and artistic history. Even so, the Hôtel des Invalides still has the power to overwhelm. It was the inspiration of the most brilliant of all the Bourbons, Louis XIV, who founded Les Invalides for all those that had seen service in his massive and long-time all-conquering army. The huge complex first opened to veterans in 1674, on one site housing a hospice, barracks, convent, hospital and factory. Home to some 4000 boarders in the 17th century, today it still serves its initial function, having needless to say gained additional fame as Napoleon’s burial place.

Among many spectacular aspects, the Grand Salon, the former council room, is especially impressive with its ornamental fireplaces, monumental chandeliers, weaponry, portraits of Napoleon III and Louis XIV and red velvet hangings. All combine to produce the elegant effect of an exceptional room. Today, Les Invalides plays host to a series of concerts, the majority of which are chamber concerts given in the opulent surroundings of the Grand Salon, thus keeping alive the institution’s long association with music, most notably as the venue of the first performance of Berlioz’s Requiem, the Grande Messe de Morts.

The concert given on 28 April by Christophe Rousset and members of Les Talens Lyriques was on a rather less ambitious scale. Entitled ‘Louis XIV au Crépuscule’(the twilight of Louis XIV) it consisted mainly of chamber works by François Couperin, concentrating particularly on three of the sonates en trio. Of these La Steinkerche was particularly appropriate in the context of Les Invalides, it having been written to celebrate the victory of Louis XIV’s forces over the Dutch in the eponymous battle in 1692, its witty evocation of the sounds of battle well portrayed by Les Talens Lyriques, as was La Superbe (1695) with its alternation of nobility and playfulness. The sonata La Visionnaire post-dates the king’s death in 1715, since it dates from 1726 and it demonstrates how far Couperin had travelled in his desire to unite elements of the French and Italian styles. All this music was played with the faultless command of idiomatic style long a hallmark of Les Talens Lyrique’s performances.

In addition to the instrumental music, the concert included vocal music sung by the exceptionally promising young bass Lysandre Châlon. The possessor of a richly rounded, well-projected bass-baritone, he impressed with his ability to communicate effectively text in cantatas and airs by Couperin and Monteclair’s striking cantata L’enlèvement d’Orithie, which relates the tale of the abduction and rape of the Athenian princess Orithyia by the north wind Boreas.

The combination of concert and introduction to Les Invalides made for an outstanding experience, but a word of caution to anyone who might think of going to a concert there. If you are not fully mobile, there is the walk across the courtyard then a considerable flight of stairs (no lifts in the 17th century) and further long corridor walks before reaching the splendour of the Grand Salon.

Brian Robins

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Recording

Georg Österreich’s resurrected treasures

CD cover Georg Österreich's resurrected treasures

Musica Gloria, directed by Nele Vertommen oboe, and Beniamino Paganini harpsichord/organ
79:06
Et’cetera KTC 1819

Rather disarmingly, the track listing for this generously filled CD notes at its conclusion, ‘All world-premiere recordings – as far as we know’. Well, here’s one listener happy to take the directors’ word for it, particularly given the meticulous research that has evidently gone into planning this recording. So who was Georg Österreich and what are his ‘resurrected treasures’? Well, for a start he was a very lucky man since he inherited a brewery. More importantly for our present concerns, he was a virtuoso singer born in Magdeburg in 1664. His early career was spent in Leipzig, Hamburg and Wolfenbüttel, but in 1689 Österreich was appointed Kapellmeister at the ducal court of Gottorf, now part of Schleswig-Holstein in northern Germany. There he made an extensive collection of German sacred music before the time of Bach along with Italian secular music. The former, now housed in Berlin and known under the name of Österreich’s pupil and its inheritor, Heinrich Bokemeyer (1679-1751), is the largest collection of north German sacred music in central Europe. The present CD, subtitled ‘North-German Cantatas around 1700’, is the result of intensive research on the collection by Baroque oboist Nele Vertommen.

The selection chosen by Vertommen and Beniamino Paganini, her co-director of the vocal and instrumental ensemble Musica Gloria, reflects the links to Österreich’s circle, including as it does two works by the man himself, one by his elder brother Michael (1658-1709), one by his teacher Johann Theile (1646-1724), one by Bokemeyer, and one by his singing teacher Giulio Giuliani (? – ?), the two last named being Latin settings. Also included is the more modern style of cantata by Johann Philipp Förtsch (1652-1732), one-time resident composer of the Hamburg Opera and later court physician at Gottorf to Duke Christian Albrecht of Schleswig-Holstein and then the Bishop of Lübeck. The works included are particularly notable for the wide variety of instrumentation and vocal forces required, the latter quite properly restricted to one-voice-per-part (OVPP). It is a general and welcome feature of the performances that the young singers of Musica Gloria bring a robust and strongly rhetorical performance style to all the music, singing also with generally excellent diction.

Arguably the most imposing and impressive of the works included is Georg Österreich’s own motet in the concertato style Weise mir Herr, deinen Weg, scored for four voices (SATB) plus ripieni and instrumental forces including two oboes, two violins, two violas, bassoon obbligato, cello and continuo. Worth noting is that the organ continuo is played on an Arp Schnitger instrument dating from 1690 and sited in the recording location, the Mauritiuskirche in Hollern-Twielenfleth on the banks of the Elbe. A setting of verses from Psalm 85 (86), it takes full cognisance of the potent and dramatic text, the solo trio at the supplicatory words ‘Wende dich …’ (Turn to me and have mercy on me) being especially telling, as is the beautiful bass solo ‘Denn deine Güte ..’ (For great is your love toward me).

Also impressive is brother Michael’s setting of the Lord’s Prayer for two sopranos, alto and tenor with instrumental parts for two violins, two violas, bassoon and continuo. But in truth there is nothing in the collection that is not without merit and worthy of these searching, communicative performances, which are not only worth discovering in their own right but provide valuable clues as to where Bach’s early sacred works come from.

Brian Robins

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Recording

Bach: Easter Oratorio, Magnificat

CD cover Bach Easter Oratorio Magnificat McGegan

Nola Richardson, Aryeh Nussbaum Cohen, Thomas Cooley, Harrison Hintzsche ScTTBar, Cantata Collective, directed by Nicholas McGegan
70:00
Avie AV2756

Following their St John Passion recorded at a live performance in 2022, which I reviewed in August 2024, the Cantata Collective under Nic McGegan have now produced a CD with the Easter Oratorio (BWV 249) and the Magnificat (BWV 243.2). Much the same forces are employed, though some of the members – both singers and players – have changed for this 2024 recording. These are fairly traditional performances with a chorus of 6.4.3.3 (or 3.3.3.3.3 for the Magnificat), plus four independent soloists and a string band of 3.3.2.1.1. McGegan himself is shown in the photographs standing in front of a harpsichord with the organ at the back, though I fail to detect any actual use of the harpsichord. The chorus is well drilled and sings with commitment: most of the voices are well-suited to the music, although there are some among the sopranos and altos who sing with more vibrato than I would like.

When it comes to the soloists, the two singers I singled out for praise – the tenor Thomas Cooley and the bass baritone Harrison Hintzsche – in the John Passion are singing on this CD also. So are Nola Richardson and the countertenor Aryeh Nussbaum Cohen. Cohen has a florid voice, and clearly has considerable experience in opera, but sings well in ensembles with other singers; he is at his best in the Magnificat where he balances well with Cooley in Et misericordia, and with the two sopranos in Suscepit Israel. His Esurientes is a delight and quite different from his over-histrionic Saget in the Easter Oratorio. Cooley is imperious in the Deposuit and sensitive partner in Et misericordia, while he and Hintzsche make a good pair in the dialogue sections of the Easter Oratorio between the disciples Peter and John. In the 1725 original version, parodied for Easter day from a secular cantata composed only three months earlier, it was clearly sung one voice to a part by an SATB quartet of named characters following the secular version from which it was parodied. This explains why the B section of the opening chorus has a duet – sung here by all the tenor and basses rather than the T and B soloists – which feels strange in the middle of the ‘chorus’ which it became by the 1743 revision when the opening chorus had been rewritten for SATB. I do not share the press’s enthusiasm for Nola Richardson: I find her voice over-produced for this period of music, and thought I detected a real star in Tonia d’Amelio, plucked from the chorus to sing the second soprano part in Suscepit Israel, though she is not given the second soprano aria Et exultavit earlier, whose voice is sweet and true.

The other matter to mention is that McGegan follows the 19th-century tradition of changing the tempo between Quia respexit and omnes generationes – two parts of the same verse – going off at a good gallop, for which there is no textual authority, although it is what we have all grown up with. But do not let this deflect you from what is a perfectly produced example of the offshoots of the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra of which Nic McGegan is now the Music Director Laureate. This is the premier Bay Area period instrument band, and deserves its outstanding reputation.

The overall impression of this well-chosen pairing is of a bouncy and jubilant celebration of the resurrection, with well-balanced scoring and judicious tempi set by McGegan, a past master at getting the overall feel exactly right.

David Stancliffe

Categories
Recording

Greene: Jephtha

CD cover Greene Jephtha Early Opera Company Curnyn

Early Opera Company, conducted by Christian Curnyn
99:22 (2 CDs)
Chandos CHSA0408(2)

The story of Jephtha and his rash vow to sacrifice the first person from his household he encounters on his return from battle if God will support his military action is known in music chiefly through the brief, but renowned 17th century oratorio by Carissimi (c.1648) and Handel’s eponymous final oratorio composed in 1751. To them can be added the version composed by Maurice Greene, the leading English composer during much of the period Handel was domiciled in London. Greene’s Jephtha appeared in 1737, but exact details of its earliest performance(s) remain shrouded in mystery. In his notes, Peter Lynan, who produced the edition used in the present performance, dismisses the theory that Jephtha was first given at the King’s Theatre during Lent 1737, no evidence for a public performance existing until its modern revival in 1997.

As with Handel’s setting, Greene’s libretto was the work of a clergyman, John Hoadley. However, the inexperienced Hoadley’s book is poor stuff compared with Thomas Morell’s, couched in stilted verse – ‘It is decreed, And I must bleed’ – and clumsily constructed. It also lacks any hint of the kind of dramatic element achieved by Morell’s fleshing out of the basic story with additional characters, while supplying a redemptive conclusion in which Jephtha’s daughter is dedicated to rather than sacrificed to God. Greene’s Jephtha is written for just four characters: Jephtha himself, his unnamed daughter (Iphis in the Handel) and two Elders of Gilead, the first a bass, the second a tenor. Like most oratorios of the period, it is cast in two parts (or acts; Handel’s is in three) and of course there is a substantial role for the chorus, Curnyn’s here being one of the successes of the performance. Like much else in the score, they cannot totally escape the taunt so often levelled at Greene that he was merely a lesser Handel. As so often with such lazy labels, there is plenty of evidence that the Englishman was his own man and we might at times more advantageously look back to Purcell. I’d suggest as an example the chorus that ends Part 1, ‘God of Hosts’. Here the reiterated war-like cries of ‘strike, strike’ have a distinctly Purcellian flavour. The final chorus is interesting, too. Since there is no redemption, the daughter’s death will happen, but unlike the sublimely tragic and bitterly chromatic chorus that concludes Carissimi’s Jephte, Greene’s follows a broad, throbbing course that is not so much tragic as understated, while reaching a peroration of real beauty. It is somehow very English.

Thanks are certainly owed to Christian Curnyn and his Early Opera Company forces for this first recording. Sadly, such gratitude must be tempered with the conclusion that Curnyn’s performance is lacking the kind of persuasive qualities needed to revive such a work. His direction overall is prosaic and lacking dramatic purpose. Too often tempos are sluggish and although the orchestral playing is neat and tidy it lacks spirit, while the almost certainly spurious inclusion of a theorbo in the continuo is greatly exacerbated by the narcissistic inclination of the player to be heard as clearly as possible as often as possible. The best of the soloists is the First Elder of bass Michael Mofidian, splendidly vibrant and producing some impressive low notes. Andrew Staples’s Jephtha is neatly and reasonably stylishly sung, but his lyric tenor is too small to convey the authority of the character, who was a renowned war leader. Mary Bevan’s Daughter lacks control in the upper register, though she is affecting in her beautiful final air, ‘Let me awhile defer my Fate’, with, to this listener at least, its affinity with Handel’s ravishing duet ‘As steals the morn’ from L’Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato, which postdates Greene’s Jephtha by three years.

Even if it cannot match the Handel, one of his greatest creations, Greene’s Jephtha contains much fine music and if we ever start to place some value on our 18th-century English musical heritage, it will doubtless occupy a valued place.

Brian Robins

Categories
Concert-Live performance

Bach: St Matthew Passion

Dunedin Consort, directed by John Butt
The Queens Hall, Edinburgh – 11 April 2025

The regular performance of the Matthew Passion by the Dunedin Consort is an annual event, with performances this year in Edinburgh, Glasgow and Perth. There is a regular clientele, in evidence from the animated exchanges in the bar before and after the performance, who know what they are coming to and appreciate it. And so they should.

John Butt directs his fine performances from the organ of coro 1, with two choirs of single voices, joined this year by a fine treble line from the RNSO Youth Chorus. His two orchestras, the first led by Huw Daniel and the second by Rebecca Livermore, include key players who have this music in their bones such as Katy Bircher, Alexandra Bellamy and Jonathan Manson, whose gamba playing in Komm, süßes Kreuz was out of this world; fluid, responsive to the voice and with that improvisatory abandon that goes with a rock-solid technique. But all the Dunedin players are expert, and with John Butt’s clear though minimal direction play together as one – there is no fussy interference from a conductor trying to show that he’s in charge, so listening and enjoying the responsibility of co-creating this remarkable music feels utterly natural – as was evident in the perfectly balanced Aus liebe, where Butt left the lingering pauses in the hands of the traverso and da caccias with the highly experienced Joanne Lunn.

Such trust among the musicians means that the players can give full attention and support to the singers, each of whom has to have both the vocal skills and the persona to manage their multiple roles and also the musicianship required to sing as a balanced consort. In this performance the singers in choir 1 were outstanding. Led by Hugo Hymas, whose voice is such pleasure to listen to and the clarity of whose diction makes the Evangelist’s part sound so effortless, I was amazed not only at his fluency – most of time (and not just in the Evangelist’s music) he was singing off-copy – but equally at his stamina: the tenor in the first choir has to sing everything in that part – solos, the Evangelist the big choruses and the turba parts as well. The others were of an equally high standard: the alto James Hall was new to me, but a perfect match in the choruses as well as a star soloist in a fluid and lilting Erbarme dich; Joanne Lunn, a seasoned singer of this music with a clean and clear voice is remarkable among international sopranos for her lack of wobble; and Ashley Riches, the bass-baritone is another singer with a dramatic and characterful voice – commanding in the part of Jesus but mellifluous in Mache dich where he was a tremendous match to the warm B flat major of the oboes da caccia, and capable of a fine and resonant low E as the final note in the opening chorus. Given their diverse voices, both the homophonic chorales and the polyphonic lines of the turba interjections were perfectly balanced, and sounded as one.

The same, alas, cannot be said for choir 2. A stunningly dramatic performance from the bass, Frederick Long, marks him out as a singer who can do both character and lyricism: whether as Petrus of Pilatus, he sung as a foil to Asley Riches; in the central section of Gerne will ich mich bequemen he presented as a Lieder singer but in the choruses he became a violone providing a secure bottom line to his choro. His Gebt mir was as good as I have heard. The tenor, Matthew McKinney, is promising with a nice easy manner and a voice that only occasionally sounded edgy as it did in the upper reaches of Geduld. The alto, Sarah Anne Champion, is a fine consort singer but has some of the more difficult lines in whole Matthew Passion in the long aria Können Tränen that follows the spikey recitative Erbarm es Gott. She set a splendid tempo, and the aria never dragged as it so easily can. I thought she was a real find for this demanding music.

The choir 2 soprano was Alys Mererid Roberts. This really isn’t music that suits her voice, and I felt for her. Even in the opening chorus, her voice – characterful and spikey, with a tight and incessant vibrato – was cutting through the ensemble, and this lack of blend was even more apparent in Blute nur. In such a small ensemble, every little discrepancy shows, and the tuning of choir 2 – based on such a good bass line – was frequently imperilled. Alys must be fun in the opera parts she is singing, but I don’t think the Matthew Passion shows her at her best.

This illustrates just how important choosing the right singers is. In small period instrument ensembles, where players frequently work together and yesterday’s students become tomorrow’s stars, people know each other well enough, and with instruments we have a pretty good idea of the sounds that work and blend convincingly. With singers, it is different. Unlike instruments, no 18th-century voices survive! Additionally, our conservatoires have few teachers who have the experience in 16th- and 18th-century singing techniques to help aspiring professional singers to learn the distinctive skills they need to sing stylishly with period instruments. So a young solo vocalist, emerging from today’s conservatoire formation as a singer, will not necessarily have the experience of how tuning, blend and even basic voice production that works with period instruments can be learned. What we do know is that in those days voices and instruments were equal partners in creating the polyphonic web of sound that Bach’s music demands.

No-one knows this better than John Butt, combining the inspiring direction of the Dunedin Consort and the playing of keyboard instruments with his role as a teacher and professor at Glasgow, continuing to research and explore how Bach’s music can be unlocked to nourish the soul and extent the horizons of our musical imagination.

David Stancliffe
Director of The Bishop’s Consort
Author of Unpeeling Bach, The Real Press, 2025

Categories
Recording

Gasparini: Atalia

CD cover Gasparini Atalia

Camille Paul soprano, Ensemble Hemiolia, directed by Emmanuel Resche-Caserta violin
75:54
Versailles Spectacles CVS147

Born near Lucca in 1661, Francesco Gasparini was an important opera composer during the transitional period that straddles the 17th and 18th centuries. In the early 1680s, he settled in Rome, where he was a pupil of Alessandro Scarlatti and Corelli. Records show that at this time he was considered an accomplished violinist, singer and keyboard player. In 1701, he moved to Venice, where he became choirmaster of the Pietà a couple of years before Vivaldi was employed there. During the period he spent in Venice, Gasparini composed some twenty operas, all except one for the San Cassiano theatre, in addition to being the teacher of such composers as Domenico Scarlatti, Marcello and Quantz. In 1716, he left Venice, returning to Rome where he entered the service of Handel’s patron Prince Francesco Maria Ruspoli. Gasparini’s final post in a long and distinguished career was as maestro di cappella at St John Lateran in Rome, a position he took up in 1725 and held at the time of his death in 1727.

The oratorio Atalia dates from Gasparini’s early years in Rome, having probably first been given during Lent in 1692 at the Collegio Clementino, an institution renowned for its promotion of music drama. Roman oratorio had a particular renown during this period, one in which opera was subject to intermittent Papal interference and disruption. Opera was of course at no time given during Lent. Atalia is the first of several oratorio librettos based on Racine’s play Athalie (1691) – another is, of course, Handel’s English oratorio Athalia (1733). Racine drew his plot from the Second Book of Kings. It relates the story of Athalia, daughter of Jezebel and tyrannical queen of Jerusalem, who – in order to usurp the throne – had all the members of the royal family executed. Only the baby Joash escaped to be hidden by the high priest Joad. After several years, Joad found the opportunity to present the boy to his people, who kill Athalia. Racine’s play is a powerful psychological study of a corrupt and evil woman; some of this comes across in Gasparini’s oratorio, which perhaps presents her with slightly greater sympathy.

Stylistically, the oratorio follows closely the scheme familiar from the earlier operas of Alessandro Scarlatti and other contemporaries. That’s to say a flexible combination of recitativo cantando, arioso and arias, the latter not infrequently following an ABA structure while not as yet a fully developed da capo form. All this can be clearly heard in the remarkable scena for Atalia that opens Part Two. The longest closed sequence in the oratorio, it is something of a tour de force in which the tormented queen, haunted by images of hell, passes through accompagnato to aria to a powerful virtuoso concluding section. It is sung with superb dramatic intensity by the soprano Camille Poul, whose performance throughout communicates vividly. Particularly impressive is her excellent diction and clean articulation. In the passage discussed above, she rises to the challenge of the exceptional music. Poul’s opening at the start of the sequence, ‘Ombre, cure, sospetti ‘ (shadows, cares, suspicions) almost produces a messa di voce – the diminuendo on the return is not quite there – while chest notes are secure and powerfully projected.

If the principal weight of the oratorio falls firmly on the shoulders of the Atalia, the sympathetic role of Ormano, the queen’s general and advisor, is also significant. It is well sung by tenor Bastien Rimondi, who like Poul also displays a keen awareness of the dramatic possibilities, particularly in the one duet, another of the highlights of the score, an argument in which Ormano upbraids the scornful Atalia. Mélodie Ruvio (the nurse of Joas) sings the role with sensitivity, but baritone Furio Zanasi’s High Priest lacks a commanding presence, the voice here sounding rather worn. The chorus plays only a relatively small role, restricted to the closing stages, but reveal Gasparini to be a fine contrapuntist. With the exception of some raucous trumpet playing, the often Corellian orchestral writing is well executed by Ensemble Hemiolia, the generously-proportioned continuo group in general supportive without being over intrusive.

There is no question that Atalia is an important revival that should point the way toward exploration of the operas, which remain largely unknown.

Brian Robins